[tonymet]

Private parties that the customer needs to pay access this NPS public data:

* AWS

* Comcast for their internet service

* Apple for their laptop

* A number of software providers for their development tools.

But asking the customer to pay google to query the data is crossing the line?

[AdieuToLogic]

This argument is nonsensical.

Site hosting is not a customer cost.

The rest you list are costs orthogonal to this service.

> But asking the customer to pay google to query the data is crossing the line?

Yes.

Why are you arguing for a US government agency to require its citizens to pay for access to data which they have already paid for by funding said agency?

[dragonwriter]

Well, no, a customer has choices for most of those, because the government isn't hosting the data exclusively with a private vendor that charges the customer for access, providing an exclusive franchise to that vendor.

That was what was suggested upthread.

Requiring the user to have certain capacities to access data, where those capacities are provided by a number of competing vendors (and some by free, gratis and/or libre sources) is a very different thing.

[tonymet]

NPS is hosting this data on AWS , a private vendor. And NPS (ultimately taxpayers) pay for every query.

So are you ok with some chinese APP company making 50 crappy NPS themed apps and having taxpayers pay for the backend?

[anon7725]

> So are you ok with some chinese APP company making 50 crappy NPS themed apps and having taxpayers pay for the backend?

I will make that trade every day of the week if it means access continues to be through a standard protocol (HTTP) and not beholden to any particular vendor.

[dragonwriter]

> So are you ok with some chinese APP company making 50 crappy NPS themed apps and having taxpayers pay for the backend?

Addressed in a comment in another subthread, which I know you are aware of since you responded to it, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39086270

[lhamil64]

Why would someone who just wants to access the data need to pay for AWS? And the rest can be avoided by using a library PC & open source software. Or more likely, are already things almost everyone has on hand anyway.

[tonymet]

Every request to EC2 costs money. TANSTAAFL

[djbusby]

> TANSTAAFL

What?

[RuggedPineapple]

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It's an old saying meaning nothing is really free. If you aren't paying money, you're paying some other way.

[dragonwriter]

> If you aren't paying money, you're paying some other way.

Taxes are, generally, money.

[ta1243]

Who exactly am I paying for the software on my laptop?

[d0gsg0w00f]

I was hoping it was a PEMDAS for AWS costs.

[ethbr1]

What's stopping me from accessing this without an AWS account, over Frontier, on a Thinkpad?

That's the difference.

[tonymet]

You’re thinking small. I’m thinking big. That’s the difference.

[ethbr1]

You're arguing in favor of making consumers require an account at a company that's already centralized too much of the web.

That's fundamentally a lot worse than the government paying hosting costs to one particular vendor for a commodity service.

[anon7725]

You really aren’t. You’re talking like someone who is willfully ignorant of the decades of internet history that have preceded this conversation.

People have quite literally died over the issue of public access to public data. It’s quite an important belay point to arrest the deterioration of the spirit of open networks.

[tonymet]

Host it as csvs as a backup

[water-your-self]

Majority of your bullet points would be circumvented by running your own server and developing on a linux OS.

[tonymet]

Where do you host this hypothetical server? How does it get internet access?

[ethbr1]

FYI, you can edit your posts for an hour. Instead of reposting, just add your new thoughts onto your previous comment?

[tonymet]

Who makes servers?

[lazyasciiart]

The federal government pays Comcast to provide internet to low income households. And you can actually access this data on any old brand of laptop, or the desktop computers provided for use in most jurisdictions, and do not have to pay for any development tools to do so.

[ta1243]

My second hand laptop isn't apple, my host is a raspberry pi, not AWS. I don't use comcast - I have a wide choice of providers including free ones (at my local library), and I've never paid for a development tool